Taxation of multiple greenhouse gases and the effects on income distribution: A case study of the Netherlands

Current economic instruments aimed at climate change mitigation focus on CO₂ emissions only, but the Kyoto Protocol refers to other greenhouse gases (GHG) as well as CO₂. These are CH₄, N₂O, HFCs, PFCs and SF₆. Taxation of multiple greenhouse gases improves the cost-effectiveness of climate change mitigation. It is not yet clear, however, what the effect is of multigas taxation on the distribution of the tax burden across income groups. This paper examines and compares distributional effects of a CO₂ tax and a comprehensive tax that covers all six GHG of the Kyoto Protocol. The study concentrates on the Netherlands in the year 2000. We established tax rates on the basis of marginal abatement cost curves and the Dutch policy target. The distributional effects have been determined by means of environmentally extended input−output analysis and data on consumer expenditures. Our results show that taxation of multiple GHG improves not only the cost-effectiveness of climate change mitigation, but also distributes the tax burden more equally across income groups as compared to a CO₂ tax. These findings are relevant for the debate on the role of non-CO₂ GHG in climate change mitigation.     

New results on rational random behavior

This letter deals with conditions under which it is preferable to buy a zero amount of information; with a proportionality of the information and loss variances associated with two different decision distributions; and with a limiting chi-square distribution of the decision maker's loss when the marginal cost of information is small.     

Maximum likelihood estimation of the Rotterdam model under two different conditions

This letter describes maximum likelihood (ML) procedures for the Rotterdam model (1) when the model is formulated in relative prices and (2) under the constraints of the theory of rational random behavior.     

The positive correlation of affluence and freedom

Non-communist countries rated ‘free’ have on average a much higher per capita income than those rated ‘partly free’ or ‘not free’. The latter two groups differ primarily in terms of the dispersion of their per capita incomes, those rated ‘not free’ being much more dispersed than those rated ‘partly free’.     

The Antonelli matrix and the reciprocal Slutsky matrix

Inverted demand models which describe deflated price changes in terms of quantity changes can be formulated by means of the Antonelli matrix or the reciprocal Slutsky matrix. The two approaches differ with respect to the price deflator and the role of the Divisia volume index.     

World income inequality and its components

About 65 percent of total income inequality in the non-communist world is accounted for by international inequality, and about 35 percent by inequality within nations. More than 70 percent of international inequality is accounted for by the inequality of two major regions.     

A maximum entropy approach to the specification of distributed lags

The maximum entropy (ME) criterion is used to justify three different specifications of distributed lags. For lag distributions in several dimensions, the ME criterion yields a considerable simplification.     

Optimal Product Variety and Economic Growth: The Trade-off between Internal and External Economies of Scale

Received July 17, 2000; revised version received February 1, 2001     

The Construction of Risk Management Credibility Within Corporate Boardrooms

Despite various corporate collapses over the last decades, risk management is increasingly influential across organizations worldwide, as if the apparatus’ credibility was impermeable to scandals that, from critical angles, cast doubt on its efficacy. Relying on a cultural perspective of analysis highlighting the range of social processes that protect prevailing institutions’ legitimacy from aberrations, we examined the sense-making approaches employed by corporate boardroom actors to maintain their confidence in the credibility of the risk management apparatus despite being exposed to a continuous flow of corporate failures pointing to risk management efficacy limitations. Specifically, we conducted 35 interviews with corporate board stakeholders, mostly board members and corporate consultants. Our analysis indicates that actors involved in risk management processes tend to interpret aberration cases through perspectives that put the blame on some implementation deficiency, thereby ensuring that risk management's core assumptions are not questioned. These perspectives point to a defensive system of thought grounded in the director and consultancy communities, whose main referents are subject to intense work and re-conceptualization in the aftermath of aberrations, thereby providing community members with the means to make sense of the frictions of organizational life in ways that maintain the legitimacy of the risk management apparatus.